No, no, no. The spread option is not primarily a running offense; it’s just one where the quarterback runs more than usual. Tebow attempted 985 passes at Florida and rushed 692 times.
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This is a pretty crazy thing to say, even if you didn’t mean that was literally the only difference. Not only are there differences other than that, that’s a pretty huge difference when you’re comparing to an option offense, isn’t it?
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Well, no, not really. Tom Brady doesn’t run because he’s fucking slow. It’s not because he’s not supposed to. The Eagles called only one designed run for Vick during the Monday night game; the fact that he took off a lot doesn’t mean he’s running a different offense.
Tebow ran the same offense at Florida that Alex Smith did at Utah- but Smith only ran the ball ~150 times a year.
In 2009, Tebow threw 314 passes and ran 217 times, but it’s not an option if the QB is the only guy who can run. That year, Jeffery Demps ran 99 times, Chris Rainey ran 89 times, Emmanuel Moody ran 58 times, and Brandon James ran 20 times. Florida ran 314 passing plays (not counting sacks) and 483 rushing plays in 2009. I don’t see how you could call that anything other than a running offense.
People have to remember the winnowing process these players went through. Consider all the people who played as seniors on their high school football team. Most of them were pretty good players. But only six percent of them went on to play for an NCAA team.
Now consider those players who not only went on to the NCAA but who were successful at it. Of the people of played football as seniors for an NCAA team, only 1.6 percent went on to the NFL. And about half of them will be cut before opening day.
There are exactly 1696 players in the NFL. That means you can be one of the top thousand best football players in the world and still be in the bottom half of the NFL.
Indeed…the “worst” player in the NFL was probably still one of the best, if not the best, player in the history of his high school, and was probably either (a) a star or (b) an important role-player on his college team.
You’re mistaken about this. They’re just completely different offenses. The Patriots don’t run jet sweeps or zone reads or have their offensive linemen pulling into space on more snaps than not. They just do not look like this or this or this. And it’s not just because Brady doesn’t run the ball – they aren’t running plays designed to give Brady that option, because they’re running an entirely different scheme where everybody is doing something different at the snap.
I’m not sure what Vick or Alex Smith have to do with it. It doesn’t matter who ends up with the ball on an option play; it’s still an option. Smith could run the option and still hand the ball off most of the time if that’s how he read defenses, and Vick can run a different style of offense and still scramble a lot. You’re either running a system like that or you aren’t, and Brady doesn’t.
The choice routes that Wes Welker runs for the Pats are descendants of the Run and Shoot as much as anything. Frequently using 4 WR sets does not, in and of itself, mean you’re running a spread offense. 90% of the time, you can run the same plays out of different formations, and that is what the Pats and most NFL teams do.
Arguing about whether “the spread” is a running or passing offense is like arguing whether “a Chevy” is a car or a truck. There is no such thing as “the” spread offense. Urban Meyer’s system is very different from Chip Kelly’s is very, very different from Mike Leach’s. Rich Rodriguez’s spread was absolutely all about running the ball; the Leach/Mumme spread was called “Air Raid” for a reason.
The Pats, and everyone else, have taken elements from some of those schemes, but none have imported anything like a full spread offense.